Unseen Holst TV film found in archives

Producers at BBC Gloucestershire have unearthed a previously unseen film about the life of composer Gustav Holst.

The film documentary, which contains interviews with composers Edmund Rubbra and Herbert Howells and Holst’s daughter Imogen, was put together in the 1970s but, for some reason, was never completed.

Among the more amusing reminiscences of Holst, described on the footage as ‘rather a gnome-like little man with a nice smile’ by one of his former pupils at St Paul’s school, were those of Rubbra, who recalled the composer practising his trombone in fields as he walked between London and Cheltenham.